Pablo González de Prado Salas
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  • Research
    • Thesis research: FtsZ
    • Postdoc: modular neural networks
    • CrowdAI
    • The Evolution of Death
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  • The Astronomy Corner
    • Astronomy Fun Facts
    • Note on Astrophotography
    • The Moon >
      • Moon-eclipses
    • Sun >
      • Sun-eclipses >
        • Annular eclipse-Madrid 2005
        • Total eclipse-China 2009
        • Total eclipse-Argentina 2010
        • Venus transit 2012
    • Planets
    • Auroras
    • Scale: the size of things
  • Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earth-Moon.png
The Earth and Moon, to scale in distance and size
Space is big [citation needed]. So much so we can't even understand it. If we attempt to draw the Solar System to scale on a piece of paper, planets would need to be microscopic! 
Here you have a bunch of cool videos and websites on this subject. I guarantee you will love it!
solar system in the desert
Watch some guys try to solve the "draw the Solar System to scale" problem by using cars in the desert. 
if the moon were one pixel
Still don't get it? In this website you can see how big the Solar System would be if the Moon were one pixel. Also, if you click at the low right icon, you can conveniently travel at the speed of light—which turns out to be tediously slow, since it will take over 8 minutes to get from the Sun to the Earth. The website ends at Pluto's orbit, since Kuiper and Oort objects are even much, much further away.
from a virus to the cosmos
​Space is big, and viruses are small. This wonderful website allows you to travel from the smallest things we know to the vastness of space. Look out for the "distance from A to B" labels.
do it yourself
Perhaps you would rather have your own examples—where would be the Earth if the Sun were 1 cm? This website will give you the size and distance of your model planets. As a bonus, it tells you how fast ths speed of light would be at that scale, as well as the size and distance to some stars and the centre of the galaxy. By the way: the Earth would be 1 m away.
And here you have a nice supernova, because it was too adorable to delete (it was here as provisional content).
Supernova from the interweb
Supernova says hi!
Auroras
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Astronomical Fun Facts
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